


blanks

by winterfire22



Series: losers remembering [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Comedian Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Everybody Lives, Fix-It, Gay Richie Tozier, M/M, Pining Richie Tozier, Reddie, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris Are Best Friends, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Stanley Uris Lives, alcohol for cw, allusions to sex but nothing graphic or descriptive, and also i am working on the stan uris version but i am open to writing more if u guys want, because retchie rights, feel free to request a character in the comments!, he's funny! he gets funny as an adult! that's the whole point!!, i can't write an it fic and have it NOT be reddie. so. reddie., i reject the ch2 thing about him not writing his own stuff, marijuana for cw, non-graphic puking, richie writes his own comedy sets also, this is a two-parter just because it was getting long, this is mostly movie cannon but there are dashes of book cannon, this writing style is a little new and weird for me but hey i tried
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24848197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterfire22/pseuds/winterfire22
Summary: over the years, there have been moments. little glimmers to draw attention to the blanks in richie's memory. here are some of these moments-- times he almost remembered his friends.(inspired by a tumblr post i can't find!!)
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier & Ben Hanscom, Richie Tozier & Mike Hanlon, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris, The Losers Club & Richie Tozier, richie tozier & beverly marsh
Series: losers remembering [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806184
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	1. twenties

_we were a fresh page on the desk_  
_filling in the blanks as we go_  
_as if the street lights pointed in an arrowhead_  
_leading us home_

1.

He’s twenty-one years old. He’s at a bar with his roommate and his roommate’s girlfriend. He’s half drunk before he even gets there, having gone a little hard at the pre func, and the rooms swarms dizzily around him. Girls laugh, guys ramble, bartenders clink bottles, music trickles. His roommate, a half sleazy dickhead named Chuck, explains something loudly to his quiet mousy girlfriend Lena. Beers clutter the table. When Lena goes to the bathroom, Chuck leans close to Richie and practically yells in his ear that there’s a cute blonde girl over by the pool table, why don’t you go talk to her? I would if not for-- you know. Richie just laughs and shakes his head. No, thanks. The whole room seems to be moving, crowded with college kids and older guys and noise, some people dancing now that time has edged away from today and toward tomorrow, relentless and frigid in its progression. It’s easy to get lost in a place like this, even from yourself. Easy to swirl around with the cadence of the room until suddenly the lights are on and it’s last call.

Chuck and Lena go back to her place, but Richie isn’t done. He doesn’t feel like he’s accomplished what he came out to do. Not that he has any firm idea of what that might be-- just some weird loose teenage notion, barely more than mist. 

But it’s not like it’s late, anyway. It’s barely two in the morning. He’s usually up until four, most nights. Watching TV, writing comedy sets he doubts he’ll ever perform, playing his GameBoy. It’s kind of nice to be outside for once, loosed into the world, breathing its full air. In Los Angeles, even the nights are warm. 

His lungs feel light. His feet uncertain. He wanders away from the bar, hands shoved into his pockets, maybe looking for another bar or a taxi or anything, really,

an arcade,

He blinks. Almost stops walking. Instead, he just kind of stumbles a few steps, his dark eyes shifting. Without really meaning to, he glances over his shoulder. The street is empty, save for a couple getting into a car a block down.

But a weird chill saunters toward him anyway. He brushes it off and continues wandering.

He turns a corner for no real reason. The universe faces him with the patio seating area of a bar, a few stragglers and last-callers still hanging around. One of them is a boy, maybe a little older than Richie. Pink polo shirt, neat brown hair, and a chunky watch.

He blinks again. Adjusts his glasses. Stares at the guy for a little too long. The guy looks back for a second, and once Richie notices his face, he no longer looks familiar. Richie offers a clumsy sorry for staring grin. 

No, Richie doesn’t know this boy. But for a second, it was like he did. For a second, it was almost like the whole world was aligning, falling into a harmony that had been lost at some point along the way. Almost.

2.

He’s twenty-two years old. He’s in bed with a girl for the first time. She’s facing away from him, laying on her side, probably asleep even though they’d only just finished ten or so minutes ago. Her long dark hair flows prettily over her bare shoulders. He can just make it out thanks to the sparse streetlight from the other side of her bedroom windows.

The normal thing is probably to stay, he thinks, but as he thinks this, he extracts himself from her bed and reaches for his boxer shorts. She doesn’t stir. She must already be asleep. He avoids looking at her as he gets dressed and leaves her small apartment, taking his shoes into the hall to put them on so she won’t hear. 

She’s a nice girl. A pretty girl. She’s funny. All in all, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her. She’s perfectly likeable. Hell, Richie figures as he makes his way toward the stairs, she’s probably out of his league by a long shot. Like, she’s so far out of his league, they aren’t even playing the same sport. And yet, here he is, slipping out of her apartment, unsure of where he parked. He walks past his car three times without realizing it, going in stupid circles, turning a two minute walk into a twenty minute walk. He’s not paying attention. He hardly even remembers what he’s doing. And by the time he finally finds his car, he’s almost forgotten why he feels so weird about this whole thing in the first place. Because there is a reason, even if it’s slippery, even if he can barely get it to hold still.

He’s been in love before. As a teenager, it must have been. In high school. He just can’t remember with whom. Which seems like a really weird thing to forget. If the feeling was intense-- and, buckling himself into his car and pulling out into the streets of Hollywood, he knows it was-- how did he forget everything about it? What the person looked like, what their name was, how he’d met them, when the two of them had known each other, whether they--

whether they loved him back.

He bites his lip hard as he pulls to a stop in front of a red light. The details are gone. He can’t even begin to remember the person.

His heart sinking, his car rambling toward the horizon like a prey animal, Richie wonders if they ever even existed at all.

3.

He’s twenty-three years old. Marinating in his own spent weed smoke, higher than he’s ever been in his life, alone in his warm darkened bedroom, he feels the hole in his chest again. Reaches for it with the palm of his hand as if it’s a tangible thing. 

He stares at the supplies laid out in front of him on his floor. Bag of clumpy, skunky green. Neon orange Bic lighter. Half-torn box of rolling papers. He imagines himself rolling another joint-- pinching the weed between his fingers, depositing it in a jagged little line on a rolling paper, licking his finger to seal it up. Sticking the joint in his mouth and lighting it and letting another waft of stinging grey into his tired lungs. He doesn’t want or need more. In fact, he has to work in the morning. He has to put on his itchy polyester Blockbuster Video polo and open the store. So he needs to drink some water and go to bed and wake up early enough to take like an extra soapy scrubby shower to get the scent off his skin and hair. 

He pushes his left hand under his glasses and knocks them off his face. Rubs at his eyes. 

He hasn’t touched a cigarette in years. But sometimes, a joint feels similar enough. And tonight as his mind scrapes through the looping motions of rolling joints and smoking them, as he sits still in a stupor, he thinks about a girl with red hair and a key around her neck. Thinks about her middle finger, long and pale, lifting into the air to signal to him that he’d just said something stupid. Thinks about standing behind a tall bush in an optometrist office parking lot at sunset, passing a cigarette back and forth. 

He loved this girl. He loved her a lot. In a gentle, pure, reckless way, like she was a piece of his heart, like every cigarette they shared was a communion. But he didn’t love her romantically.

Because there was someone else. There were a handful of others, but really, his red mind muses, there was just the one person else. Wandering into the parking lot, hands stuffed into jeans pockets, taking one puff off the cigarette and coughing about a thousand times. 

brown eyes?

And the first time he ever tried the drug he’s chalk full of right now, he was with this girl and this other boy. They were in the basement of Richie’s childhood home in Maine. His parents were asleep. The small square window at the top of the basement wall was propped open, even though it was raining, even though the droplets were occasionally falling into the room. The three of them sat on the floor, red eyed, and the other boy was talking and talking and talking

about--?

The red haired girl was laughing. Richie was just listening. 

But that was teenage Richie in Maine, and this is adult Richie in L.A. The memory slips away and dissipates into oblivion as if it were never there in the first place. And, alone, he goes to bed.

4.

He’s still twenty-three years old. It’s a Saturday evening in late spring. He’s leaving work, the collar tag of his blue uniform polo scratching against the back of his neck uncomfortably. The Pepsi bottle in his hand sloshes, half empty, half lukewarm as he walks toward his car. 

The sky is coming down on him, light slivers of wet against his hair, his shoulders, his arms. He watches the dark spots appear on the sidewalk in front of him. Reaches his right palm forward to catch a droplet or two. 

He has a scar on this hand. Pink, jagged, faded with time but still visible in the right light. When he looks at it, he can almost see something else too; sunlight, haloing overgrown greens, warming the crown of his head. Bright green, vibrant like nothing he’s seen since, caked over with the glow of late summer warmth. He draws air into his lungs. Closes his hand into a fist.

He makes it to his car and tucks himself into the driver’s seat, sticking his half-drunk Pepsi into the cup holder that doesn’t have a fistful of grimy change in it. He turns the car on. Buckles his seatbelt. Shifts into reverse. Pulls out of his parking spot.

Once he’s facing forward, ambling down the street on his familiar route home, he glances to the clock. He doesn’t register the time. But a weird spike nudges into his chest, his throat-- late for something. Late for something important. He touches a hand to the crown of his head. Just hair.

But he’s supposed to be someplace. He’s supposed to straighten someone’s tie and tell them they’re going to do great and stand in front of a bunch of people for a thing. And he’s supposed to have a little fabric disc pinned onto the crown of his head while he’s inside this place. And then afterward, when everyone is outside, he’s supposed to get a little bit too drunk and take it off and throw it like a frisbee and get in trouble. He’s supposed to glance at--

at?

a person,

And they are supposed to share a quiet smile, because, yeah, it _is_ funny to take off your kippah and throw it like a frisbee as long as you aren’t still inside the synagogue where such things would be considered disrespectful and wrong.

But Richie Tozier is not Jewish. He was raised Catholic and now he practices nothing, believes in little. He has no business wearing a kippah. He doesn’t own a kippah. By all senses of logic, he never has. By all senses of logic, he shouldn’t even know the Hebrew word in the first place, let alone the insider details about how and when to wear one and whether it’s okay to throw it like a frisbee once you leave the synagogue or not.

He looks at his watch at a red light. It is May 15, 1999. It is 4:11 p.m. He’s late for nothing, but in his soul he knows that’s not quite true. 

By the time he finishes the drive and makes it home, the uneasy feeling has floated away, and he easily slides into his usual post-work routine of zoning out in front of the TV.

5.

He’s twenty-six years old. He hasn’t donned an itchy Blockbuster Video polo in years-- hasn’t run the system to check if _Addams Family Values_ or _Back to the Future_ are loaned out or not since before y2k. Now his uniform is print shirts from vintage stores and leather jackets and slightly less chunky but still thick glasses. Now his video check out counter is a stage, and his loans computer is a microphone, and instead of a horde of sleepover kids or date night couples, his customers are young adults looking for a laugh or two on a Friday night. 

And they do laugh. They laugh a lot. Jokes he’d scrawled on the back of grocery store receipts or stepped out of the shower to write down on a water-damaged notepad-- things he’d toyed with and muttered to himself as he poured a morning cup of coffee-- they laugh. It feels like the most natural thing in the world. He scans his audiences every show, looking, checking

for?

Not that he ever finds it, but he looks and checks. He likes to know who he’s talking to. Likes to note the ones who don’t look so thrilled in the first few minutes, likes to check back up on their faces to see if they get it eventually-- and they always seem to. 

Tonight, it’s one of his biggest crowds yet. The room has a film over it. Something hanging in the air. This one matters.

The emcee announces him. Here’s Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier! He goes out onto the stage without letting himself overthink it. If he overthinks it, he’s done for. So instead of overthinking it, he paints an oversize grin on his face and waves at them and he starts talking.

He’s good at this. He’s in his element. He gets a big laugh within ten seconds. 

He looks as he talks. Finds people to talk to specifically, even if they might not realize that he’s doing it. He chuckles a little bit along with them. He puts on a great show.

He moves on from a dark-skinned guy with facial piercings and gelled hair. Locks his eyes on a woman around his age with a high ponytail and a tee shirt that 

wait really in the year 2002? has the New Kids on the Block logo splashed across the front.

He blinks a few times. He used to be friends with a new kid. That same logo was splashed over his bedroom wall, along with

something worse.

Richie almost loses his place in his set. But he doesn’t. He seamlessly incorporates his bumble into the joke. Elicits an even bigger laugh than usual. Goes on with his set. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s good at it, and he won’t slip up this easily. He won’t remember the tee shirt by the time he gets home, either.

6.

He’s twenty-eight years old. He’s waiting in line at the airport. This is commonplace for him now, shifting around the country, barrelling through the air, ears popping, writing joke ideas on the backs of barf bags. And it’s good, because people are notorious for acting a fool in airports and on airplanes. He’s used travel-adjacent antics for more than a few acts over the years. 

Plus, it’s not like there is anything keeping him home. It’s not like there’s anything waiting for him other than an empty house, an avocado that is probably brown by now, and a pile of half-folded laundry. He doesn’t mind being on the move. Doesn’t mind that he’s failed to maintain any sort of personal relationship, that the person he talks to most frequently is his manager Annie. Making strangers laugh is easier than making friends laugh, anyway.

He shifts his suitcase in his hand for a moment before giving up and setting it on the floor. The line is slow moving, stalling, held up thanks to-- he leans his head to the side, trying to look past the line-- some kid with--

a bike,

Richie didn’t even know you could check those onto airplanes.

But then again, when you’re twelve or thirteen, your bike is your life. Your saving grace. Maybe you have a friend who teaches you how to take care of it, to fix the flat tire, to tighten the bolts just right. Maybe you have a bunch of friends and you all ride together in a pack, wind rushing past your face, feeling like you own your town even though it’s tried to eat you alive.

Driver’s licenses don’t come until your sixteen, and cars of your own don’t usually come until you’re in your early 20s. But most kids have bikes. Some kids name their bikes. Carefully mark letters into the side of it like a baptism. And some bikes have reputations. When you’re a kid, sometimes you’re even friends with

Richie blinks. The line moves forward. He moves with it. Before too long his suitcase is carted away on the conveyor belt, tailing the bulky trashbag-wrapped bike, and he has his boarding pass in his pocket.

7.

He’s twenty-nine years old. He’s asked his manager to delay his flight home from Florida. Told her that he wants to stay a couple extra days after the show and the TV appearance. He cites beaches and Disneyworld, even though he has absolutely no intention of going to either.

The world here is hot, and damp, and cloying. He can feel it on his skin, a constant reminder of the ocean’s proximity. There was humidity where he grew up, sure, but most days it was mild. A subliminal fact of life. There was something much, much heavier in the air of his hometown than humidity. He almost has a trace of it caught in his line of sight here. But it vanishes, as it always does.

Even inside his hotel room, the air seems heavy and damp. 

It’s not great. He’s never liked humidity. Never liked heat all that much, either. So there must have been some other reason for extending his stay. Some notion in between joke ideas and adult reminders in the recesses of his consciousness, tucked away like an unneeded receipt, accidentally accepted after mindlessly replying ‘yes’ when the cashier asked if you wanted it.

He reaches for his glasses and slides them on. Checks the time on the clock radio next to his hotel bed, wonders if breakfast is still open. It should be. 

Florida. He has a friend here, he thinks. Someone he used to know who’d moved. Who’d mentioned wanting to be in Florida. Someone with soft determination in their eyes, someone who always had a patient smile for you even if you were being annoying. Dusty blue jeans from

a farm?

No, he doesn’t have a friend here. Whoever he’s thinking of-- if he was here, if he was under this humidity too, Richie would have noticed by now. The fact of the matter is that this person never made it to Florida.

Just the thought sends a cold wash down Richie’s spine. Prickles the skin at the back of his neck. 

He leaves his hotel room, tucking his key card into his pocket, hoping breakfast is still out downstairs, hoping that it isn’t too late.


	2. thirties

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to kaia for medicine cabinet help <3

8.

He’s thirty-two years old. Out of nowhere, consistent and busy success has come for him like he’s being hunted. Not only success, but fame, too. He gets recognized. He takes pictures with fans after shows. He signs autographs. People are always bringing him paper plates to sign, thanks to this one bit he did about crashing a barbecue when he was twenty-three and stoned.

Now, he’s home, though. Not home home. Just Los Angeles. He’s just wrapped up a three week engagement at a venue in Santa Monica last night, and tomorrow he’s going on Jimmy Fallon, but tonight he’s on his own. Tonight, he’s wandering down his street, hands in his jeans pockets, heading for the convenience store around the corner for a six pack of Angry Orchards and a frozen Hawaiian pizza. He missed last night’s SNL because of his show, but he saved it on DVR, so that’s the third item on his Aging Bachelor Hitlist. 

It’s a warm night. He can feel the sun on him even though it’s almost seven. He’s been inside all day, re-doing bits, stumbling upon half-finished chores, making a shitty salad out of whatever was in his fridge. It feels nice to be outside. To smoothly, seamlessly nudge himself into the world, to join everyone else in their ruthless campaign for living.

The convenience store is packed. Overflowing with teens. Young teens, maybe middle schoolers. They must all be together, in a pack, as teens usually travel-- too vulnerable on their own, even if they don’t know it yet, but either way unwilling to part from each other. They laugh, loudly, at nothing. They make faces at each other. They annoy the cashier. It’s almost cute, really. 

He gets distracted by a new flavor of Starbursts, but then he picks up what he came for. He lets the teens check out first, lingering in the back corner, pretending to read wine bottles, as if he is ever going to be interested in a. wine from a convenience store or b. wine.

They dissipate out the door, still joking and talking, passing around the candy they’d just bought. 

It’s his turn. He approaches the counter. Offers an eyeless grin. Places his three items down. 

Kids these days, the cashier says with an impatient wave of his hand, as he accepts Richie’s credit card. What can ya do. As he swipes it, Richie reads his name tag. It’s written in marker, smudged a little from an impatient hand that undoubtedly pulled away with an ink stain. Scrawled in impatient capitals. BILL.

He blinks a few times as BILL

big bill?

Bags up his items. He blinks a few more times as he accepts the bag and his card and walks off without so much as a thanks man have a good night.

Outside, the kids are lingering. Clumped together, off to the side, still passing around candy, arguing about flavors, trading. One of the kids reaches into his pocket and puts something plasticky to his face,

an inhaler,

And puffs it. Richie picks up his pace. Doesn’t want the kids to feel threatened by the loose adult grown-up man walking past them. 

He swallows air as his feet hit the pavement in a rhythm that doesn’t reach the inside of him. He wishes he had his iPod. He’d meant to bring it. Only forgotten. Small details are a liability in the swirling cabinets of his mind.

Who is the Bill he’s thinking of, he wonders uncomfortably, and who had an inhaler, and where are they now, and did they make it out?

He no longer wants the alcohol, the Hawaiian pizza, or the candy. He isn’t even sure he wants the Saturday Night Live anymore.

9.

He’s thirty-three years old. Unease tumbles from his mind like river water against a dam, hitting against rocks as it goes, thick and sludge-like. He has no excuse, no explanation for cutting another date off early, for going home alone, for losing the girl’s number. No excuse other than the weird void it leaves in his chest when he tries to be normal and date.

He lets himself into his house and locks the door behind him and kicks off his sneakers. He cleans his glasses on the hem of his shirt slowly, regarding the blur of his kitchen, the coffee cup and loose dishware in the sink, the disarray of important grownup papers on the side counter. By the time he slides them back onto his face, and blinks into clarity, he’s determined that the only answer is to get stupid drunk alone in his living room. He has to work tomorrow night, sure, but a hangover in the morning won’t ruin him. He reaches for the bottle of Jose Cuervo and fills a glass with ice and a few squirts from the 99 cent pre-squeezed bottle of expired lime juice hanging out in his fridge. He takes these things to the living room and sets them on the coffee table, still a cobalt blue thrifted number that likely saw its best days in the 1980s in spite of his swelling bank account. Paint-chipped wood, blockily rectangular, something his mother would have scoffed at.

He pours tequila over the ice and leaves the bottle uncapped. Knocks it back in a few uncomfortable gulps.

Once the glass is empty, he refills it, and allows the second helping of tequila to smack against the spent ice, limeless, nothing but bitter booze. But then, he leaves the glass where it is, and leans his elbows on his knees, and scrubs at his face, dislodging his glasses.

He doesn’t usually mind being a loner. It’s easier that way. And he has a comfortable routine; during the day he sleeps in and writes and watches TV, and at night he does shows or drinks. He goes to bed alone. Eats whatever he feels like eating, nobody to argue with, pizza or Chinese. If he wants to eat a tajin-sprinkled avocado with a spoon for lunch and chase it with six oreos that’s his prerogative. There’s no one to tell him he’s drinking too much or working too much or spending too much time on the road. No one to get annoyed with him and tell him he’s being too loud. No one to get frustrated when he watches the same sitcom episodes for the hundredth time. Not even a cat to worry about. Not even a house plant, other than the fake fern his mother had sent him as a housewarming gift the year before she’d died. 

He can talk to himself. Use all the hot water in the shower. Leave messes and clean them up in sloppy increments before getting distracted by something else. There are no rules. He’s just a guy on his own, just some 

loser?

He downs the second pour of tequila. That’s right, Tozier, he thinks, you’re a loser. You’re a loud, obnoxious, friendless loser. What did they call you growing up? That’s right, Trashmouth.

They.

He exhales hard through his nostrils, doing his best to ignore the burn of the alcohol in his throat. He sets his glass down hard. Trashmouth. That’s what they called you. But who the fuck are they? Because when did you ever have any friends? What, your roommates from when you left

left--? (where, where did you leave from?)

And moved to California fresh out of high school? Nothing but scrapped together savings from a part time job at Wendy’s and a couple suitcases? No. He hadn’t been friends with any of those people. He’d tried, sure. Tried the whole time. Gone out with them, joked with them, shared weed with them. But no matter what he did, it was like there was some barrier, some sort of dam, that he couldn’t crack past. He could put his full weight against it as many times as he liked, or try to make inside jokes and nicknames and habits with them, and all of those roommates would just kind of nudge away at the last second. Hang out with their girlfriends if he got too close. Tell him he ought to try shutting up once or twice, see how it suits him. Easily turn down his invitations to hang out; no, I have to study, I’m going to dinner with a friend, I’m going to visit my parents this weekend. Living alone isn’t all that different from living with roommates. It’s not like he had anyone to hang out with even when there was a guy or two down the hall.

But, fuck, he thinks as he pours the third glass of tequila; _fuck_ , he used to have friends.

Why can’t I remember where I grew up?

No. He sips the third glass in a desperate bid to shove down the question, to forget it. Because the truth is he doesn’t know the answer. And he can’t ask his parents, because they are both dead. No siblings. Grandparents died when he was little. Aunts and uncles and cousins scattered, sure, but it’s not like he’s talked to any of them in years. He has nobody to ask. Not that he would have the balls to ask even if he did-- because what kind of crazy idiot forgets where he grew up? Too much fun in ‘99, too much weed and alcohol and let’s be real a dose or two of cocaine, just to try it. Maybe he just killed the brain cells that remembered. Maybe he’s killing more brain cells right now.

He fumbles for the remote. Anything. Noise. He turns the volume up and finds a familiar sitcom to zone out in front of. The tequila is draping around his mind nicely, dulling, quieting, shhhhh. He leans into it.

If you ever had friends or not, he tells himself, it doesn’t matter now.

10.

He’s thirty-five years old. There’s a bolt gun in a comedy movie he’s watching, certain in the hands of a trope-heavy hick farmer. Rusted, a little bit, but still shiny in places. The farmer doesn’t use it, just holds it, just gestures with it as the protagonists climb deeper into the farce of trying to explain why they’re hiding in his barn. Just the sight of it turns his stomach.

Without even bothering to pause the movie, he sprints to the bathroom to dry heave over the toilet. Has no idea why.

11.

He’s thirty-six years old. He’s waiting his turn, sitting on the sidelines of a small stage, watching another comedian perform a twenty-minute set for a Netflix special. He has his own hour long special from a couple years ago, of course, and he’s set to film another one this coming summer, but this is a good opportunity too, his agent had said.

I have a kid, the comedian says, scratching at his sideburns, and I don’t know if you non-parents out there know this, but the music in kids’ shows, it’s so fucking annoying. It was designed specifically to irritate the hell out of the parents. The Disney Channel suits sat in a room and they brainstormed ideas for how to annoy parents for like, hours. And what they came up with us, it’s the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, come inside, it’s fun inside. Are you fucking kidding me?

The audience laughs. Richie almost does.

He can almost see the dirt floor and the coffee tin full of shower caps. There was a hammock. And six friends.

The clubhouse. 

It had been a middle school refuge for him and his friends, tucked into the woods, far away from parents and bullies and 

and? (and what?)

He blinks. The comedian moves onto another joke. The half-remembered notion-- the clubhouse-- fades from his memory, slipping away into the stage lights and the audience’s laughter and the glare of the camera lens.

12.

He’s thirty-seven years old. He’s fucking thankful he doesn’t have a show tomorrow, because he must have eaten something bad or gotten some kind of stomach flu or something. He doesn’t really care. It doesn’t really matter. He’s confident it’ll be cleared up within a couple days, but right now, he’s sitting on his bathroom floor, half delirious.

It’s been hours of this. He’s probably dehydrated. His stomach is completely empty but he keeps having to lean over the toilet to choke on stomach acid anyway.

Maybe it hasn’t been hours. He reaches a shaky hand for his glasses and shoves them back onto his face, blinking at the dim room. Is it the middle of the night? It’s hard to know sometimes. He lives alone, follows a weird late night work schedule, and keeps heavy curtains over every window. One of the fun side effects of his near blindness is that light sometimes gives him bad headaches, so he prefers to keep his house dim. Prefers to hide out.

He leans his head against the bathroom wall. It’s been a minute since the last stomach to throat to mouth to toilet betrayal montage. He figures maybe he should try to drink some water and see if he can keep it down. Ugh. The thought of having to put something down his throat right now almost triggers his gag reflex all over again.

He stands, pulling himself up by the counter, and notices two things. One, his reflection in the bathroom mirror; yeah, he looks like shit, all pale and messy-haired and bleary-eyed, still dressed in the patterned short sleeve button down and jeans he’d worn to the show he’d preformed, who knows when but maybe only like three hours ago, back when he’d been a perfectly fine, functional, healthy member of society. Two, the bottle of Pepto Bismol on the counter. He’d taken it out when he’d started feeling sick, but had puked his guts out before he’d even been able to get the cap off. He could take some now, sure, but like, nasty. He puts it away in the medicine cabinet. Catches sight of the chubby bottle of Advil, the probably-expired Claritin, can opener-- can opener? He frowns, rubbing at his face. 

What the fuck is wrong with you, man, he asks himself silently. Oh well. He closes the medicine cabinet door and leaves the can opener put. Wonders how long it’s even been in there. Not like he uses it all that often. There’s nothing else in the medicine cabinet, anyway, plenty of room for dumb shit like can openers--

eddie would be appalled--

He blinks at himself in the mirror. Watches his dark blue eyes narrow. Who the fuck is Eddie?

You’re so sick you’re making up imaginary friends, his mind suggests, thoughts pushing loudly like a subway in a narrow tunnel. 

No, I didn’t make him up. He’s real. Where the fuck is he?

What was the name you just made up?

Richie has already forgotten.

He leans down and drinks out of the sink like a cat. The water is lukewarm and tastes awful, but he isn’t convinced he can make it to his Brita pitcher right now. He cringes as he straightens back up.

The kid from _The Addams Family_? Wednesday? No, that’s the sister. Hugs… Hugsley? Is that the brother’s name? No, _The Munsters_. The boy from _The Munsters_ , that was the name he just came up with out of nowhere, if he could only even remember what the fuck that name is. He never watched that show growing up. Only _The Addams Family_. Flashing through his uneasy mind, he thinks about the 1990s movie remake, the VHS kids practically battled over in the Blockbuster he used to work at. 

He wipes sink water off his face. He should drink some more but he can’t deal with that right now. He decides to take a shower instead since he feels disgusting.

Glasses back off, clothes off, shower on. He stands under the hot water, letting it beat down on him, leaning his forehead against the shower wall for a moment. The night could really go either way; he could puke five more times or he could be done. Only time will tell.

He can feel his pulse in his forehead. He tries to remember the name he’d just thought of, reaches for it desperately, but it slides out and dissipates into nothing.

By the time he falls into bed, one shower and one sloppy tooth brushing session later, he’s forgotten what he forgot.

13.

He’s thirty-eight years old. He wakes up at 4 in the morning, in a cold sweat, half-remembering being called something vile and being all but chased out of an arcade. Fully remembers the shame he felt, the hurt, pulling his shoulders in, stinging behind his eyes. 

And the people who’d made it okay, they had diaspora’d unevenly right when he needed them the most. The blonde boy with the pudgy cheeks 

who never even made fun of him once. 

He’d moved somewhere far away and stupid. He’d been in love with a girl-- whom Richie had also loved, albeit in a very different way-- but he’d left anyway.

And the boy with the neatly tucked in shirts, and the caramel curls, whose face was

serious but when he smiled--

Where was he?

And everyone else?

Richie shakes his head in the darkness, rubbing at his dry, sleepless eyes, and flops back down onto his bed. You drink too much, he tells himself. You’re killing your brain cells or whatever.

It takes him almost an hour to fall back to sleep. By the time he wakes up, he barely remembers the dream, or the faces afterward-- only knows he didn’t sleep as well as he could have, only knows he needs a second cup of coffee even if it will make him fidgety. 

14.

He’s thirty-nine years old.

They’re all here. The red haired girl with the determined softness in her eyes, she’s real, and she has a name. Beverly. And Stan, who’s finally grown into his personality, with his beautiful dark-eyed wife timid but warm next to him. And Bill, who has a furrow between his eyebrows, who dresses exactly the same as he did when they were kids. And Mike, who never left, who waited, who tended the lighthouse in everyone else’s absence. And Ben, who has become unbelievably cool, with his strong shoulders and chiseled abs and worlds of patience. And Eddie, the only person Richie has ever been in love with, the person he somehow still loves after forgetting him and half remembering him a handful of times and now finally seeing him again in person, the boy behind the letter he’d carved in the kissing bridge nearly three decades ago. 

The group of them-- lucky seven, the loser’s club, plus the woman who wouldn’t let Stan go alone-- share dumplings and fried rice and orange chicken and fortune cookies and drinks. They talk and laugh and it’s like no time passed at all. They tease each other. He feels high on something that night, lifted, safe somehow even as they descend under Derry to face It all over again.

And when the loser’s club leaves their hometown, worse for wear, exhausted, but whole, he remembers them this time. He remembers every one.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! please comment!!!!!!! and let me know if you want me to do this for any characters other than stan!!!


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